LawBreakers may be free-to-play, who knows, plus 20 minutes of gameplay

LawBreakers is Cliff Bleszinski’s next big thing, or at least we’re betting that Cliffy B as well as his new studio, Boss Key Productions, hopes so.

Until recently, very few have had the opportunity to even see the game, let alone speculate on its success.

With this new 20 minute gameplay demonstration, however, we’re now well within our right to take uneducated, almost entirely arbitrary guesses at the success or failure of LawBreakers.

We’d love for it to succeed. As alienating as Bleszinski’s opinions can be at times, he’s still largely responsible for Gears of War.

Besides, more competition in the free-to-play market not only forces everyone involved to offer a better, more appealing service, but it should apply a little pressure to the likes of Blizzard (Overwatch), Valve (Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike) and the multiple developers responsible for Call of Duty to up their game.

Having seen this latest gameplay demonstration we’re a little concerned.

Like we said not all that long ago, LawBreakers seems to borrow a lot of itself from games like Overwatch and Team Fortress 2 (particular its character classes) and plays a lot like Unreal Tournament, only a little slower.

Our issue is that it doesn’t really do anything to help it stand out amongst the competition.

Why would we play it over any number of alternatives, these 20 minutes don’t really look to provide the answer – perhaps it’s in the feel of the game.

We won’t stand by anything until we get a crack at it ourselves, but it’s a little worrying.

Perhaps we’re just being a little jaded; it does boast a pretty incredible production value for being free-to-play, even if Boss Key Productions has no idea how to monetise it yet.

“We’re still playing around with the monetization model. We want it to be positive. A lot of core gamers hear free-to-play and it’s like feeding a child asparagus. There is a bad reputation to it and I get it,” Bleszinski told Game Informer.

They may well offer the option of an initial charge, but we wouldn’t recommend it:

Maybe someday the game will come to consoles. And we’re not ready to rule out the idea that maybe if you give us $20 bucks and you can have early access and then when the game launches you get a special pack that other people pay $20 bucks for. How you do free-to-play is unique for each product, and we want do to do it in a good way that makes gamers happy. We’re open to unique ideas for how we get this game to market.”

To do its best, LawBreakers needs to get in the hands of as many PC gamers as possible… and not suck, but that last part is fairly obvious.